George Skelton, by no means a conservative columnist, points out what an all out bust, disaster even, the so-called Buffet rule has been in CA.

If President Obama really wants to see the “Buffett Rule” in action, he should look at California’s tax system. The state has been plagued by it for years.

The revenue stream is unstable and the state budget has been a deficit disaster.

Soaking the rich — relying heavily on them for income taxes — has resulted in a precarious revenue roller coaster ride. It’s either boom or bust in Sacramento, depending on how the wealthy are faring in the stock market and their other investments.

He goes on to parse how ridiculous the state’s finances have become by trying to fuel outrageous spending growth by taxing the rich, whose incomes tend to be volatile, and who are quite capable of shifting their earnings out of the state if they feel overtaxed.

Alas, he winds up arguing that the middle class needs to pay more taxes! So he hasn’t fully caught on that the state has a spending problem, not a revenue one.

Adrian Moore, Ph.D., is vice president of policy at Reason Foundation, a non-profit think tank advancing free minds and free markets. Moore leads Reason's policy implementation efforts and conducts his own research on topics such as privatization, government and regulatory reform, air quality, transportation and urban growth, prisons and utilities.